Expansion is the AFL’s best bet for success

 
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By , 21 Feb 2008 Roar Insight is a Roar Rookie

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I’ll start this blog by stating what I hope is obvious. You’re here at The Roar because, hopefully, you’ve found this isn’t a place to pull punches.

We’re talking AFL and it’s my job to cut through the spin cycle. I have no agenda, except for doing what I believe is in the best interests of the game and its fans, and for keeping the game’s bean counters and scribes accountable.

I have only agreed to do this column on the proviso that I can call it how I see it, even if the boss doesn’t like it. We’re going to have some fun with this blog because the entire game – not just the administrative body – is a protected species.

Fans, unfortunately, are kept at arm’s length and have no choice but to follow the agenda of News Ltd, Fairfax or the Australian Football League. A rough deal, I reckon.

But if you’re worried this will be a pessimistic, strictly off-field whinge-fest, don’t worry, we’ll discuss Chris Judd’s hamstring soon. Sounds good? Great. So, let’s get the AFL part of The Roar sizzling with discussion.

In the past few days, there’s been an explosion of talk about two new teams joining the AFL. First thing to realise is this: there is no magic number. If Melbourne could support 15 teams, they would. If they could support only five, well, there would only be that many teams. Fitzroy and South Melbourne have been unfortunate but necessary casualties of the system.

So when some faux moral crusader comes waltzing in off the long run – I’m backing Trevor Grant or Ron Reed – to say an 18-team league would destroy the competition, I’d advise you to look elsewhere (how that pair went out of their way to attack harmless soccer fans recently made for an alarming heads up on their disdain for new things). Professional sports teams are a matter of supply and demand, not magic numbers.

I’ll say it here and now: the Gold Coast market will prove an absolute winner, hands down. Western Sydney, while a much tougher market, is an essential step if the AFL wants to make the step from ‘bigger than its rivals’ to the nation’s ‘national sport’. But it is not as ready as the Gold Coast.

The Coast can’t be ignored any longer. But while interest in the code is already there, an uprooted club won’t work. Queenslanders, even those close enough to hurl a cane toad to Tweed Heads, can’t get enough of their home-grown teams and heroes.

For whatever reason, AFL football draws a crowd. The Brisbane Lions draw comparable attendances to the NRL’s biggest club, the Brisbane Broncos. The Swans are nearly twice as big as any NRL team in Sydney. But the lesson from these experiences is that while the code eventually tends to shine through, building a solid base is an essential pre-cursor to building a team, unless you want to lose as much money as Geoffrey Edelsten or Christopher Skase.

If the AFL moves hard and fast to upgrade Carrara appropriately, and keeps pouring in the cash to supplement the development and promotion of the game in the region as it has done for the past decade, then I do believe the Gold Coast Sharks/Suns/Stingrays will become a strong, viable club in less than ten years from now.

This isn’t to say build it and they will come, because the AFL’s tentacles have dangled deep into South-east Queensland for some time. Now the whole state seems to be catching on – just look at the 2006 draft, where eight of first 32 picks came from the sunshine state, with 11 players picked overall. The game is spreading and it would be negligent to deny the people the team they want.

Don’t buy this saturated market rubbish. Melbourne’s market is ‘saturated’, apparently. Yet the Kangaroos will sign up more members in 2007 than any NRL club, and will probably end up turning over a strong profit (albeit only after being threatened with relocation). If 3.7 million Melburnians can support 10 AFL clubs, powerful NRL and A-League franchises and even two NBL teams, I think half-a-million Coasties can handle one NRL club, one AFL club, and probably the Gold Coast Galaxy over summer as well.

The tag ‘Boomtown Australia’ doesn’t guarantee success in itself, but it reflects the fact that within five years, the Gold Coast will become an important cultural, financial and residential hub, with sporting desires quickly being shaped. They need an AFL team to grow up with.

Now to Sydney. That gosh darn mess of a city; five wholly different identities crammed into a basin which stretches from the mountains to the ocean. They already have a team, and while they’ve put a respectable amount of work into the west, the Swans are the team of the eastern and northern suburbs. That is their market.

West of Strathfield, they don’t mind the Swans, but love either the Eels or Panthers. They have their own identity, and don’t think of themselves as being Sydneysiders. They are ‘westies’.

Unlike Melbourne, Sydney is dreadfully difficult to navigate, and is divided by battlelines of beaches and bridges. Thus, folks tend to mix in their own areas, and each region gets stigmatised accordingly – northies are snobby old money, easties are filthy rich and plastic, southies are rednecks, westies are bogans and inner westies are alternative hippies.

Nobody really gets along, although the east and north are kind of amicable, and they are comfortable sharing a love of the Swans, Waratahs and the SCG Members’ pavilion.

Out west, they have a hunger for sport. Working class sport. Rugby League is their game, but the AFL monster is bit like the drilling machine from the final Matrix movie; wherever Australians live, they will be found by the AFL.

Already kids are emerging from Sydney ‘Aussie rules’ clubs (that expression should be outlawed); the product of long overdue investments north of the Riverina. They are well behind what’s happening in ‘SEQ’, however, and the open-mindedness of Gold Coast residents and the pre-existing infrastructure and investment means they are ready to roll.

But Western Sydney cannot be ignored. The market is too big. I’m not sure the AFL can get a team to operate there just yet, but within three years of the Sharks (or whatever name they get), a team representing the two-thirds of Australia’s biggest city should be in the AFL.

Expansion now is not as necessary as it was in 1987, and it may not be as challenging or rewarding. But for the sake of a truly national competition, and for respect from two of Australia’s most important markets, the AFL must work on that Gold Coast team now, and keep drilling to reach those westies.

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